Political Correctness around the world and its stifling of liberty and sense. Chronicling a slowly developing dictatorship Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)

Saturday, May 14, 2011

From now you must jail EVERY burglar, British judges will be told

Judges and magistrates are to be told to send burglars to jail in instructions that end a decade of official leniency. Rules for the courts made public today said a criminal who burgled somebody’s home should ‘expect a custodial sentence’.

In a shift away from efforts to reform burglars, the rules put the harmful effect of crime on victims before the hope of rehabilitating offenders.

The least serious crimes will continue to attract community punishments, but the guidelines say only in exceptional cases should a domestic burglar escape jail.

Drawn up by the Sentencing Council, a body dominated by judges, the guidelines reflect an Appeal Court ruling by the Lord Chief Justice more than two years ago in which Lord Judge declared that ‘our homes should be our castles’.

They end a slide towards soft sentences for burglars which began in 2002 when former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf said more burglars should be kept out of prison because few criminals were deterred by the threat of jail and community sentences were cheaper for taxpayers.

Sentencing Council rules demanding jail sentences and longer prison terms are also a rebuke to Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, who is pursuing a policy based on Lord Woolf’s thinking which encourages greater use of supposedly reforming community sentences.

Since 2000, the proportion of burglars convicted in the courts who are sent to prison has fallen from more than 50 per cent to less than 40 per cent.

The new guidelines, sent out for consultation, say that in cases of domestic burglary, where someone’s home is invaded, the offender should escape prison only in exceptional cases where there has been no break-in, where only low-value items have been stolen, and there are no aggravating factors.

Courts are told to concentrate on the impact of burglary on victims rather than theories on how criminals might best be rehabilitated.

Last year the Sentencing Advisory Panel said that in the most serious cases of domestic burglary, in which homes are wrecked or people are threatened with violence, the minimum sentence should be two years. The Sentencing Council said that should be three years.

For such crimes, it said the panel’s recommendation of a four-year maximum jail terms should be changed to six years.

In the case of the least serious burglaries, the council guidelines still allow a community sentence. But even the least serious offenders can be given six months in jail under the new rules, as against three months suggested by the panel last year.

Courts are also told that if a victim is at home during a burglary or suffers trauma, sentences should be more severe. The guidelines said: ‘The majority of domestic burglaries should receive a custodial sentence.’

Lord Justice Leveson, the council chairman, said: ‘Burglary can have a very serious impact on victims – it is very far from being only a crime against property. ‘As a result, we have ensured that the impact on victims is at the centre of considerations about what sentence should be passed on a burglar.’

He added: ‘The guideline does not reduce the severity of sentences being given to those convicted of burglary. Rather, it reinforces current sentencing practice that burglars targeting people’s homes can expect a custodial sentence.’

Javed Khan of Victim Support said: ‘We are pleased that victims are being considered in these guidelines.’

A new left-wing group defending the right to protest needs to defend the right of those they disagree with, too

Last Thursday, a newly formed left-wing campaign group, Defend the Right to Protest, held an emergency meeting in London in response to police tactics at anti-cuts and student fees demonstrations. The following day, a member of the right-wing protest group the English Defence League (EDL) was served with an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) restricting his right to protest. Has Defend the Right to Protest complained loudly about this shocking restriction on someone’s democratic rights? Not at all. Yet if this collection of left-wing activists is serious about defending the right to protest, it should unequivocally condemn the state’s curtailment of everyone’s rights of association and organisation – including those with whom we might disagree.

There ought to be no doubt that the EDL case represents a severe infringement of an individual’s rights. Over the next three years, 19-year-old Joel Titus is forbidden from attending any demonstration that is connected with the English Defence League or being ‘part of a group of 10 or more people whose actions could cause alarm or distress’. His ASBO from Uxbridge Magistrates Court also claims he must not ‘display a sign or placard or use defamatory or insulting language which could cause alarm or distress’. (What might constitute causing alarm or distress remains unclear.) He is also forbidden from entering mosques, Islamic prayer rooms or a defined area of Whitechapel in London.

What did Titus do to deserve such a punishment? Absolutely nothing EDL-related. Titus was instead convicted of a ‘section 4 public order offence’ and for obstructing a police officer as a result of an incident at a pub in Hillingdon, north London last year – an incident which the Metropolitan Police has confirmed to spiked wasn’t associated with EDL activities.

This use of an unrelated offence to remove an individual’s right to protest is the most insidious attack on the EDL’s political rights to date, yet protesting bans on EDL members are not new. In fact, this is the latest in a series of ASBOs that have been slapped on EDL members. In March, due to abuse he’d shouted at an Asian family at a train station, Shane Overton was banned from attending or organising any EDL demonstration or meeting or even visiting its website for 10 years. In addition, he was banned from travelling by train anywhere in the UK and from entering a mosque, meeting room, school or cultural centre.

And last December, two individuals pleading guilty to ‘disorderly conduct’ at an EDL march were given bans preventing them from engaging in EDL activities (including on the internet). They were also restricted from attending any protests anywhere in the UK that weren’t within a 10-mile radius of Birmingham.

Yet strikingly these affronts to civil liberties seem to have passed many of those on the left by. The newly convened Defend the Right to Protest group has yet to make any mention of these cases. Instead supporters complain about the fact that their pet project UK Uncut seems to have been ‘singled out’ for harassment by the police, blind to the fact that far greater restrictions to the right to protest are being routinely placed on the EDL.

This isn’t to downplay the importance of Defend the Right to Protest’s opposition to police actions, such as kettling and pre-emptive arrests. These do impinge upon our freedom to protest and should be stopped. And the official Defend the Right to Protest website is right to argue that ‘it is vital for all those who value our democratic right to protest to stand in solidarity with students and others who have been arrested or injured by police on these demonstrations’.

But it is equally as vital for those wanting to defend the right to protest to speak out against attempts to restrict the freedom of groups they may not agree with. After all, if, a few months down the line, left-wing activists start getting ASBOs preventing them from attending UK Uncut protests, then they will be in a poor position to protest – they turned a blind eye when such orders were imposed on others in the name of ‘public security’. Unfortunately there are precedents for such double standards. As spiked editor Brendan O’Neill has pointed out elsewhere, left-leaning liberals didn’t pipe up when police used authoritarian techniques against football supporters; they only started to complain when they start being used on them.

The idea of defending the right’s right to protest is not something certain groups on the left are likely to stomach. Indeed many have a terrible track record in terms of lobbying for No Platform policies to be applied to groups they don’t agree with. And left-leaning groups can often be found lobbying the state to try to get a demonstration they don’t agree with banned. Take Hope Not Hate, the group behind the anti-fascist publication Searchlight. It has promised to watch EDL demonstrations closely in the hope of spotting any members with ASBOs so it can then rat on them to the authorities. It seems that groups like Hope Not Hate have no problem with the idea of compromising the right to protest as long as the state only restricts the freedom of people with the Wrong views.

Defending the right to protest means nothing unless everyone has it, regardless of the content of their protests. Otherwise what exists is not a freedom to protest as one sees fit; it is a state-sanctioned privilege to protest as the authorities see fit. This is something that those on the left, who are now discovering the importance of defending the right to freedom of expression, would do well to remember.

The Miami Heat's LeBron James was publicly rebuked for saying "retarded" in a post-game interview during the NBA playoffs.

One Public Rebucker was Gary Blumenthal, CEO of the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers, who rebuked: "LeBron James offended millions of people with his use of the 'R'-word," thereby conflating the R-word with the racial N-word.

Another Speech Code Tyrant, chipping in with his own rebuke of "LeBron James should apologize immediately" was Peter Berns, CEO of the advocacy group The Arc.

So who decides what is or isn’t politically correct?

That would be a cadre of self-appointed thin-skinned sensitivity-saturated Political Correctness Bullies whose sole justification for existence is to publicly heap verbal abuse on anyone who utters the wrong word at the wrong point in history.

The Mother of all Ironies in all of this is that The Arc previously called itself the Association for Retarded Citizens of the U.S.

"Retarded" fell victim to what Steven Pinker calls the "euphemism treadmill." Earlier vulgar taboo words like "idiot," "imbecile" and "moron" gave way to "retarded" which gave way to the more cumbersome but suitably syrupy "mentally challenged," "intellectually disabled," "with learning difficulties," "developmentally disadvantaged," and "special needs."

One can only wonder what new sensitivity-sanctioned euphemism will eventually displace them all.

Meanwhile, can we expect Blumenthal or Berns to publicly rant against those who call libertarians "libertards"?

In case you’ve missed it, this too-clever-by-half locution, used repeatedly online, was coined by the big government statist masses who yearn to be taxed, subsidized, regulated, controlled, domesticated, neutered and coddled by the coercive collectivist state and is designed to slur freedom lovers as "libertarian retards."

Here’s an example of its usage: "Ron Paul is probably our country’s most famous Libertard. He is, of course, a f...ing moron." - suicidegirls.com. (The F-word was self-censored because Examiner is a mainstream fuddy-duddy site.)

This means that people who use a derivative of "retarded" and the word "moron" are both anti-freedom and insensitive to special needs individuals – most likely Progressives with mile-wide hypocrisy streaks.

But libertarians embrace a live-and-let-live philosophy that includes freedom of speech. By their definition, then, a "retarded libertarian" is still immensely smarter than the smartest government-worshipper.

Libertarians welcome all freedom loving people, including "retards" no matter their currently fashionable euphemistic label, into their ranks.

Humans are naturally predisposed to believe in gods and life after death, according to a major three-year international study. Led by two academics at Oxford University, the £1.9 million study found that human thought processes were “rooted” to religious concepts.

But people living in cities in highly developed countries were less likely to hold religious beliefs than those living a more rural way of life, the researchers found.

The project involved 57 academics in 20 countries around the world, and spanned disciplines including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. It set out to establish whether belief in divine beings and an afterlife were ideas simply learned from society or integral to human nature.

One of the studies, from Oxford, concluded that children below the age of five found it easier to believe in some “superhuman” properties than to understand human limitations.

Children were asked whether their mother would know the contents of a closed box. Three-year-olds believed that their mother and God would always know the contents, but by the age of four, children start to understand that their mothers were not omniscient.

Separate research from China suggested that people across different cultures instinctively believed that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lived on after death.

The co-director of the project, Professor Roger Trigg, from the University of Oxford, said the research showed that religion was “not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf”.

“We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies,” he said. “This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.”

Dr Justin Barrett, from the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, who directed the project, said faith may persist in diverse cultures across the world because people who share the bonds of religion “might be more likely to cooperate as societies”.

“Interestingly, we found that religion is less likely to thrive in populations living in cities in developed nations where there is already a strong social support network.”

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Background

The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog

A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?

Kristina Pimenova, said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair

Enough said

There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though

What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so

Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.

Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners

Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.

The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole

Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations

Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.

I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.

I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass

The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"

Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"

Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".

One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.

A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."

Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).

The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin

"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE

RELIGION:

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes

What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian

Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil

The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties

Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!

No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"

On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here